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Anthony Meredith, Christianity and the Secular. By Robert A. Markus., The Journal of Theological Studies, Volume 59, Issue 1, April 2008, Pages 377–379, https://doi.org/10.1093/jts/fln008
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This relatively short but densely argued work by Robert A. Markus consists of an introduction and four chapters, which originated in the Blessed John XXIII lecture series in theology and culture delivered at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana. The titles of the four chapters reveal the basic thrust of the book: ‘From the Beginnings to the Christian Empire’ (ch. 1), ‘Augustine and the Secularization of Rome’ (ch. 2), ‘Consensus in Augustine and the Liberal Tradition’ (ch. 3), and ‘From Augustine to Christendom’ (ch. 4).
Markus has interested himself in the thought of Augustine, above all in his Saeculum (Cambridge, 1970), and in what happened thereafter, especially in the life and works of Gregory the Great. How did Augustine (d. 430) and Gregory (d. 604) differ in their treatment of the classical culture around them? On that particular issue Markus argues convincingly here and elsewhere that by insisting on the place of the Bible in education, above all in book 3 of his De Doctrina Christiana, Augustine instituted a revolution in the Christian attitude to pagan learning which had reached its apogee by the end of the sixth century, by which time Christian writers in the West, though not in the Greek East, had parted company from their classical past. So, he, Markus, writes on p. 87 that Gregory, unlike Augustine, read the world through the Bible without any difficulty.
